The Trouble With Hairy by Hal Bodner; Amazon Digital Services; 2012; 682 KB pgs; $3.99 US

It started with missing pets.

The police force of West Hollywood believed a large animal was roaming the streets and killing off their citizen’s beloved pets, and while certain individuals within the local government demanded that the animal be captured, not a whole lot of effort was put into finding the beast.  That is, until three people also turned up dead.  Though the deaths of the three appeared to be unrelated (only one of them was attacked by an animal) the West Hollywood Coroner, Becky O’Brian, discovers that they all share similar wounds, and as it turns out, they were all gay men.

Becky has seen this type of thing before, but instead of a beast killing gay men it was a rouge vampire committing the murders.   So when a suspect is arrested she calls her best friend Chris, a gay vampire who had helped the police department on the earlier killings, for advice.  When Chris arrives with his lover Troy to assist Becky and the Police, he knows right away the suspect is a werewolf, but not the one who killed those men.  And so the chase begins; first to find out why a werewolf is hunting gay men, and then to find this beast and stop him from any further killings.

Now all of this might sound awfully serious, and I will say that many sections of this novel are thrilling and creepy as hell, but for the most part, this just might be one of the funniest horror novels I’ve ever read.  And yes, I mean intentionally funny.

Bodner, quite simply has a great big funny bone…he is one heck of a comedy writer.    He also has a gift for dialog and characterization that just sucks the reader right in; there are no wooden characters in this tale or stiff dialogue to be found anywhere in The Trouble With Hairy, the novel is as entertaining as it gets.  Bodner manages to make all his characters, whether they be human, vampire, or werewolf, into real flesh and blood for his readers (or bloodless as the case may be).  And more importantly, he makes them endearing.  You just can’t help but love Bodner’s characters and root them on through the entire novel.

If I have one complaint about the novel it would be about the length of a few of the scenes.  I thought some of the non action scenes were just a tad too long, and what had started off as a humorously grand time eventually turned uncomfortable.   The description of West Hollywood in the beginning of the novel is a good example, while I thought it started off hilariously, Bodner drained the humor from the situation by milking it too much, he should have quit when he already had us rolling on the floor laughing.  It’s a small gripe and I should add that others may have the opposite opinion.

The Trouble With Hairy had me laughing out loud on just as many occasions as it had me enthralled with its plotting.  Hal Bodner is an excellent writer who not only possesses an outstanding sense of humor but has a strong talent for provoking tension in the reader with his actions scenes.  I enjoyed The Trouble With Hairy and can honestly say I look forward to the next release in this series.

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Feb 17, 2012

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